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the measure of a life

2013-04-28T02:48:39Z

I finally got around to listening to Rush's Clockwork Angels all the way through. I could really kick myself for not having found out about it until after the tour had passed through San Jose already.

The whole trio has clearly always been fascinated with the philosophical problems of Compatibilism -- how to make sense of free will, and notions of meaning and purpose, when our bodies are simply agglomerations of matter, subject to physical laws. You can hear it in "Free Will" (written by Neil Peart), and in "The Angel's Share" from Geddy Lee's solo album My Favourite Headache. Clockwork Angels is basically a rock-opera exposition of a steampunk society that believes in G*d as the Divine Watchmaker, with all events in life being predetermined and deserved. Except the protagonist gets subjected to a series of trials (much like Voltaire's Candide; there's even an "all is for the best" Leibnizian Optimism reference early in the album). Eventually he loses his faith, but finds something different, leading to the final track, "The Garden" (which is of course referencing Eden, but also drawing a contrast to the mechanized dystopia that's been left behind):

The arrow flies while you breathe,
The hours tick away,
The cells tick away,

The Watchmaker has time up his sleeve,
The hours tick away, they tick away

The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect,
So hard to earn so easily burned

In the fullness of time,
A garden to nurture and protect
It's a measure of a life

The treasure of a life is a measure of love and respect,
The way you live, the gifts that you give

In the fullness of time,
It's the only return that you expect

Yes, that. I could see this being adapted for an actual dramatized stage performance, though to work with the theme you might need some pretty expensive mechanical equipment. Possibly a movie / extended music video (with some good graphics for the airships, clockwork city, etc) would be easier... In any case, it kind of reminds me of the works artists in an earlier age created to honor religion -- Handel's Messiah, Bach's "Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben", Mozart's Requiem, etc. It's a musical monument to faith -- in the sense of a grand work that commemorates something in the past, or someone who's died.

Waffles

2013-04-14T23:15:01Z

Since I've mentioned making these in recent FB posts, I thought I'd post the recipe.

For reference, this is the waffle iron I use. I turn it up to the max setting, and its indicator lights work pretty well, with the Bisquick version of this. If you swap the Bisquick for the substitute mixture, you get a denser waffle -- each one has more heft, and is chewier / less fluffy -- and you need to wait maybe 45-75 seconds past when the indicator light says it's done, to get something properly cooked through and browned. OTOH, maybe you like a lighter waffle, in which case the light will be fine...

Bisquick substitution: Bisquick contains hydrogenated oils, so some folks like to avoid it; I am told by folks who've experimented (including my dad and my older brother) that there doesn't seem to be anything else on the market that makes as-fluffy waffles; the industrial sifters and mixers can coat the flour granules with oil in a way that ensures they don't bind up and form a dense, gluten-y batter. However, the first time I made this, I used the substitute, and they were still, IMHO, pretty darn tasty. So, the substitution: One cup of Bisquick is more or less equivalent to a mix of one cup of flour, 1½ teaspoons of baking powder, ½ teaspoon of salt, and 1 tablespoon of oil. Mix up your not-Bisquick before the step where you combine it with the nut butter.

PERFECT WAFFLES (from Fred and Sandra Gey)

In blender combine 1/3 cup each of sunflower seeds, pecan pieces, and cashews. (You can mess around with substituting these; I actually did about 50% pecan, 35% cashew, 15% pine nut in today's batch.) Add 3/8c oil (ideally something like 50% canola / 50% some nut oil like walnut, almond, or hazelnut). Blend until well ground. Add 2/3 cup milk and blend in. Set aside.

Separate 4 extra-large eggs or 5 regularly-large eggs. (I have an egg separator tool, and I separate out my whites into a very small bowl, then drop the yolk in one larger bowl and dump the white into another -- and this saved me a lot of grief today, because I did rupture one of my ten yolks. If you get any significant amount of yolks into your whites, the whole batch will be ruined -- you can't get a stiff-peak meringue if you have yolk in there; some protein in the yolk messes that up.)

Add yolks to blender, and blend until smooth.

Mix egg whites with beater/whisk, until stiff peaks form. (There is really nothing that will do this as quickly and effectively as a Kitchen Aid stand mixer. I lurrrve my KitchenAid; I hadn't been using it a lot, the last few years, but then we've used it a bunch in the last couple weeks, doing waffles and cakes, and I remembered why I like it so much.)

Place 4 cups of Bisquick (regular, or low fat if preferred; or substitute previously described) into separate large mixer bowl. Dump in contents of blender. Rinse blender vessel with 2 cups of milk, adding that milk to bowl of soon-to-be-batter. Mix using paddle on a low-ish setting (start at the basic "stir" setting, and go no higher than about 4) until it generally comes together, forming a slightly lumpy batter (should only take about a minute).

Turn on waffle iron, so it will be fully heated as soon as the batter is ready.

Pull bowl out of mixer, add egg whites into batter gently with a rubber spatula -- don't stir, just fold the meringue down into the batter. Leaving clumps of meringue is fine, because next you shove back under mixer, re-attach paddle, and stir for another 15-30 seconds to fully combine.

Ladle waffle batter into iron. Bake til golden brown. :-)

And here's instructions from my brother Greg on his variant, which has kind of a crunchy / granola-y texture, and is much faster to mix up.

Nut Mixture:
In a Cuisinart type food processor, throw together about one cup of whole oats, one cup of flax-flakes or similar stuff, two cups of walnuts, 1 cup of almonds, 1/2 cup of corn meal. Then I just turn the sucker on until it's evenly mixed and chopped into little tiny pieces -- not chunks, not plasma, just nice and grainy. Then I put the whole shebang in a jar and use it to mix up various things, including the waffles.

Waffles:
Take about 1 cup of the mixture from above, 1 cup of Bisquick (if you can find a no-hydrogenated-fats mix that works nearly as well, let me know; every "crunchy" substitute I've tried produces yechy waffles), 2 Tbsp. brown sugar. Mix dry ingredients until, you know -- mixed. Put in 1 egg, 3/4 cup of plain, whole yogurt, and then enough milk to make it the right consistency for waffle batter. If you're into a bit of oil, splash a bit of canola in there before whisking together. Let it "breathe" for a minute or two to make sure your consistency is what you want, then waffle away.

That's what I do anyway. Nothing to say that it's as good as it could be. Of course, I recommend all natural, organic, outrageously tree-hugging ingredients of every kind whenever you can get them. If you come up with improvements / fun variations, let me in on it.

Tapioca / mango / palmyra pudding

2013-03-21T08:19:17Z

In a small pot, combine:
One small (5.5 oz) can of coconut milk.
A similar amount of milk.
1/2 cup of tapioca pearls.
1/4 cup of crystallized coconut palm sap, or other form of palm sugar; or you could use a bit less of regular sugar, or even some maple syrup. (And honestly, given how sweet the dish came out, you could probably cut the sugar by 10-15% relative to this, as long as you're using palmyras in syrup, not packed in just water or some kind of juice.)
a pinch of salt (maybe 1/4 tsp?)

Simmer for five minutes. Add one mango, diced, and maybe half a cup of palm seeds. (We found them jarred, in syrup, at our local Asian grocer. I generally expect stuff in glass jars to taste fresher than stuff in cans, but it probably doesn't make a huge difference.)

Simmer for another five minutes. Test the a pearl to see if it's cooked through.

Cooking time may need adjustment depending on exactly what size / type of pearls you use.

Xta remarks that she should've taken a photo; it's not particularly pretty, but it is quite tasty. I was attempting to replicate a dessert I had once, a number of years ago, at a South-Chinese place in Mountain View. I think I came reasonably close, actually, on the first try.

Maybe I need a drink. :-P

2013-03-15T16:49:40Z

I've been stuck at the allergy clinic this morning longer than usual because I had a weird blood pressure spike. 150/95, when I've never seen it over about 130/85 before, and it's usually a little below 120/80. Probably nothing to worry about -- just over-caffeinated on top of my regular stress-load, and I was kind of running in a little late, so I may've been elevated because of that. Plus I was talking somewhat animatedly to the nurse when she started taking the pressure. But they want me to chill out in the waiting room and check it again in a bit, to make sure it's nothing to do with the shot.

I wonder if it's occurred to them that being stuck here when I have stuff to do may, itself, be a stressor. :-P

I'm at least logged onto work email through the waiting room's free wifi, trying to get something done. Unfortunately, the things I really need to do require my PC, which is on my desk at home. :-/

ETA: I was still somewhat elevated when I left -- in the 130/85 type of range -- but that was normal enough they decided to let me go, so I went and got our Rachel Maddow tickets and then came home. My stupid persistent cough left over from cold a couple weeks ago acted up for a while, just after I got home, which is weird, usually it's worst at night, after about 10pm. Still feel... just weird. Not bad exactly, and I don't feel any kind of tightness in the throat (it's a little sore from the cough, but basically the same as the last few days) or other anaphylaxis stuff... I dunno. I guess I'll try to self-monitor for any more serious respiratory syptoms, and either try to drive myself to the nearest hospital (I guess the county-run medical center, near Hillsdale Shopping Center?), or call 911, if things actually become noticably worse. Blah. Medical stuff is expensive. (Woo, another thing to stress about, to keep the blood pressure up! Keep it up, brain, you can achieve an aneurysm if you really put your mind to it!) Also, would miss my dental appt at 3pm and have to re-schedule.

Dear body,
Quit it. :-P
Thanks,
me

ETA: Well, I went to my dental appt, and I'm home now... I still feel just a smidge odd? A bit hyper, or lightheaded? I'd almost say it still feels like a caffeine thing, except it seems implausible that much of this morning's coffee is still in my system. I have a pretty high tolerance. My somatic sense of it, though, is strikingly similar to the experience of drinking 4-6 shots of espresso over the course of just a couple hours. (What? It was Johns Hopkins. That's how we got through writing final papers and studying for exams.)

opera tix

2013-02-04T07:43:27Z

Così Fan Tutte: SF Opera info, My ticket ad
Tales of Hoffmann: SF Opera info, My ticket ad

Feel free to pass along to friends who might be interested.

Lovecraftian electric circuits

2013-01-23T18:23:52Z

My office suite has two light switches near its front entrance that control lights in the common area of the space.

Turning on one switch by itself turns on a few lights. Turning on the other by itself turns on a few other lights. But then there are a couple lights -- the ones I actually care most about, because they're directly over the sink, and all the other lights are shaded by my body when I'm standing there cleaning out my mug, or whatever -- that only come on if both switches are on.

This is ludicrous. What electrician would do such a thing on purpose? I can only assume that the electrical wiring is actually tracing out Enochian sigils, or eldritch runes. We're working in a building designed by Ivo Shandor. When some Elder God comes bursting out of the basement to devour humanity, immediately before I'm driven mad, and eaten, I'll experience a grim sense of satisfaction at having at least anticipated our collective demise.

A few days too late, but enjoy...

2012-11-27T00:32:40Z

Turkey emoji:

_\∞̬̑/_

I'm using the &#xWXYZ; construct, where WXYZ is four hexits. In this case, 221E (infinity sign), 0311 (combining breve above), and 032C (combining caron below). I'd wanted to do a turkey emoji or emoticon the other day in a GChat, and hadn't been satisfied with any of the things I came up with, and then just now it occurred to me to look at the combining-diacritic codepage.

That's just the kind of dork I am.

She walks in beauty, like the night.

2012-11-23T23:13:35Z

This image (taken by Ben Canales; and I saw it on Bad Astronomy) is the kind of thing I've always thought of in connection with Byron's "She walks in beauty, like the night." The awe inspiring beauty of the universe, and the beauty of my beloved, are close kin -- the macroverse rhyming with with the microverse.

She walks in beauty, like the night
    Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
    Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
    Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
    Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
    Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
    How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
    So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
    But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
    A heart whose love is innocent!

Endorsements for General Election, November 6, 2012

2012-10-23T03:20:24Z

President: Barack Obama.

US Senator: Diane Feinstein. Sigh.

US Representative, District 14: Jackie Speier.

State Senator, SD 13: Jerry Hill. This is a repeat of the Primary ballot. I leaned to Jerry then. The Merc analysis of the debate between the two notes that one of the distinctions is that Jerry has been more supportive of high-speed rail (though still with restrictions). OTOH, he's also been more open to seeing housing development in the salt flats area; I'm not crazy about that, but we do need more housing, and he has at least said that he wants housing their limited, and still supports densification in the existing areas.

State Assembly, AD 22: Kevin Mullin, who's the only Dem running.

County of San Mateo Board of Supervisors, District 4: Shelly Masur. Another repeat from the Primary. I did seriously consider Warren Slocum, but I came down on the side of Masur then, and I do again now. Interestingly, the Merc, which is relatively conservative for the SF Bay Area, is endorsing Masur, who's probably the more progressive candidate.

County Board of Ed Member, Trustee Area 7: Joe Ross. I've met him -- he was a volunteer for the Becker campaign -- and I found him to be thoughtful, and good at active listening. He also has a more impressive list of endorsements, and more detail in his policy discussions.

San Mateo County Harbor District, Members, Board of Commissioners: Holsinger, Brennan, Parravano. Two of the six candidates didn't even bother to submit statements. Among the other four, three are incumbents; the one who isn't is Brennan. I'm going with the three who I think have the strongest set of endorsements and seem to make good, detailed statements, in the ballot pamphlet and to the League of Women Voters SmartVoter site.

Sequoia Healthcare District, Members, Board of Directors: Kane, Griffin. It's a "vote for two". There are three candidates. One is an anti-government kook who wants to dissolve the district and stop providing county medical services. I'm voting for the other two, both of whom seem fine.

Prop 30 and 38: YES and NO, respectively. This overcomes my default opposition to propositions because a tax hike require a two-thirds vote of the legislature and all the Republicans have signed the idiotic no-taxes-ever pledge; in order to just keep struggling along with our already straitjacketed budget, we need Prop 30. Both of these props involve imposing a temporary income tax hike. Prop 30 is only a hike on the top bracket (but also includes a small sales tax hike); 38 is much broader. 38 adds to the "ballot box budgeting" constraints faced by the legislature. Also, Prop 30 reverses some broad budget cuts (developmental services, fire, police, etc), whereas 38 only provides for schools. If both 30 and 38 pass the 50% threshhold, but Prop 38 gets more yes votes than 30, only 38 counts. So, I'm planning to vote YES on 30, NO on 38.

Prop 31: NO. Does some good things (better budgeting process in some ways -- I do like the idea of having the two-year time horizon), but some really bad things, like devolving a lot of powers to local governments in ways that will create complexity and redundancy, and putting in place a loophole-riddled Pay-As-You-Go rule that has been criticized by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (a non-partisan think-tank that I'm a fan of, and that more or less wrote the Congressional PAYGO rule that Dems have used since the '90s). PeteRates.com has a longer write-up on this. Interestingly, the CA Republicans want this measure, but some Tea Party groups oppose it; whereas the Dems and their various interest groups (Cal Federation of Teachers, Cal League of Conservation Voters, etc) are unified in opposition.

Prop 32: NO. This basically attacks the ability of unions to organize and spend money on state races, while not limiting many incorporated entities or PACs. Even groups that usually analyze elections without endorsing anything, like the League of Women Voters, are opposed.

Prop 33: NO. This is a re-run of the Mercury Insurance proposition we voted down a few years ago. It's an attempt to undermine the rules set up by the CA Insurance Commissioner, to let insurers gouge customers who have a lapse in coverage.

Prop 34: YES. Ends the death penalty, and commutes all outstanding death penalties to a true life without parole sentence. It takes a bunch of the savings and grants the money to local law enforcement for the first four years of implementation, dedicated to bringing down the unsolved rate on rapes and murders. PeteRates again has a good write-up on this topic, if you're not already familiar with all of the serious problems. Even if you don't oppose the idea of state-sanctioned execution to begin with, we simply can't guarantee that everybody executed is actually guilty, and if you screw that up it's not something you can make right. And in the service of this monstrous system, we waste huge amounts of money going through all the appeals, dragging the process out for years. A life-without-parole sentence would provide more finality, sooner, at a lower cost. I'm not crazy about the ballot-box budgeting thing, but it's time limited; so it sends money to an area that does need funding currently, without locking it in forever.

Prop 35: NO. This proposition does not overcome my default presumption against propositions. Human trafficking is already illegal, and if it needs to be penalized more, the legislature should deal with that. Legislators love looking tough on crime. If this is important, they can deal with it. It's also worth noting that the way this ballot measure is written, it has some really weird effects; for instance, anyone who "benefits" from prostitution -- such as a parent, child, or roommate of somebody who engages in prostitution who has part of their rent paid by the prostitute's income -- could be classified as a sex offender.

Prop 36: YES. Scales back the Three Strikes law, requiring the third strike to be violent. It's a little weird that if your record is "murder, murder, non-violent theft", you don't get automatic life, while if your record is "murder, non-violent theft, murder", you do. But, I'm generally in favor of scaling back the three-strikes law, and since it was initially put in place by proposition, we can only scale it back this way.

Prop 37: Waffling. I'm in favor of GMO labelling in general. Not for any health reasons -- I don't think there's any reason to think the types of GMOs that go into the human food supply are dangerous -- but because of their role in industrial monoculture, and because of the ugly way that patent law has been misapplied to the field of bioengineering. I'm really not happy about doing this from the ballot box; if we ever want to edit it we have to go back to the ballot box again. a_steep_hill, in comments, below, makes some arguments in favor, and I also saw some reasonable-seeming materials in favor in Whole Foods today. Christa also ended up arguing the YES side the other day, before flying off to MD, basically just because the anti campaign has been so over-the-top. There's a reasonable argument to be made, but they're not making that, they're taking their corporate millions and spending it on pure irrational fear-mongering.

Prop 39: YES. Back in 2008, when the financial crisis was crashing tax revenues, Arnold bridged a late-year budget gap by using "revenue accelerators" -- in which some taxes got collected early, without collecting more tax overall. As a price for agreeing to this, the Republicans who came over and allowed that budget demanded some new tax loopholes, including one that made it easier for out-of-state companies with substantial revenue in CA to avoid paying taxes on that revenue. This closes that loophole, restoring the pre-'08 rules. This will bring in $1B per year. For the first five years, it takes about half of that and spends it on a green energy grant program. Again, I'd prefer skipping the ballot-box budgeting thing, but it's time-limited, and looks like a reasonably good program.

Prop 40: YES. If this measure gets a "no", there would be state and county spending totalling about $1M to re-draw the State Senate districts, again. Republicans put this on the ballot in the hopes of getting a more favorable map, but then dropped their campaign b/c the courts basically told them they couldn't have such a map until at least 2014, and the new map would be more or less the same to what we currently have.

San Mateo Measure A: YES. Raises the sales tax (sigh) to restore funding for some really critical services (like 911 dispatch).

San Mateo Measure B: YES. Changes from electing all five county supervisors in county-wide at-large elections, to actually using the districts. Cuts the number of constituents for a supervisor from ~300k down to ~60k; this would theoretically make campaigns cheaper, less dependent on high-profile endorsements, and make it more possible to keep in contact with more constituents. We're the only county that currently does things this way, and regardless of the fate of Measure B, the at-large system may be struck down by the courts as diluting the vote of our Latino and Asian-American communities. I don't feel strongly about the at-large versus district-based elections question, but I mildly lean towards districts, and we may as well save the litigation costs.

San Mateo Measure C: YES. Takes the Controller / Auditor job and makes it an appointed position, rather than elected. It's a specialized position that requires a specific skill set. The supervisors believe the controller should be selected through a hiring process that lets them review those skills. Nobody's bothering to oppose this measure.

pretty hike

2012-09-03T03:04:09Z

Since these things tend to fly by on Facebook (where I posted this link earlier), I thought I'd put it here, as well: Xta and I took a hike by Crystal Springs Reservoir, from 92 down to the Las Pulgas Water Temple. Three panorama shots, and a number of other photos, can be found here. It was quite a warm day, so when I was originally uploading stuff I was kinda feeling icky with the sweat and sunblock. Happily, I am now all showered clean.

CatTV

2012-08-15T02:10:20Z

Some silly little brown bird (maybe a sparrow of some kind? we have hordes of them around our house, anyways, and they sometimes roost under the eaves out front and leave droppings on the hood of my car :-P ) just flew SMACK into the window of the office / guestroom, kinda wobbled / hovered for a sec, then flew back into the bushes on the other side of the walk. Hoshi and Keiun, who are sitting on the futon, have HUGE eyes now, and Keiun is chattering. "Do it again, daddy, do it again!"

Opera tix still for sale...

2012-08-10T22:22:19Z

Rigoletto: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/tix/3197412562.html
Cosi: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/tix/3197423738.html

Feel free to send the links to friends.

PSA: Blenheims are in season.

2012-06-30T03:13:45Z

For anyone who attended our wedding, the amazing fruit that went into the apricot maple cake is now available at CJ Olson's in Sunnyvale. I got a ten pound flat yesterday. :-)

ballot for Primary Election on June 5, 2012

2012-05-20T22:15:45Z

President: Barack Obama. I think he has taken much weaker positions in many negotitations than he could have, failing to grasp just how radical and intractable his opponents are. And I am mystified and disappointed by his Justice Department's failure to uproot Bush policies on torture and spying. But side from those two things, I think he's been an excellent president, and his record of achievments in his first term arguably is far longer and more impressive than Clinton's was in his first term. (For starters, Clinton failed at healthcare reform, and for all that the Affordable Care Act could stand to be improved, it passed, and will do tremendous good for millions of Americans.)

US Senator: I still kinda hate DiFi. The Bay Guardian put it well: "She's a moderate Democrat, at best, was weak-to-terrible on the war, is hawkish on Pentagon spending (particularly Star Wars and the B-1 bomber), has supported more North Coast logging, and attempts to meddle in local politics with ridiculous ideas like promoting unknown Michael Breyer for District Five supervisor. She supported the Obama health-care bill but isn't a fan of single-payer, referring to supporters of Medicare for all as 'the far left.' But she's strong on choice and is embarrassing the GOP with her push for reauthorization of an expanded Violence Against Women Act." I'd also add that she's bad on progressive taxation -- back in '06 one of her friends / fundraisers / advisors made some public remarks in favor of Schwarzenegger over Angelides on the basis of the idea that rich people are over-taxed, and DiFi didn't make a peep to contradict her. However, there doesn't seem to be any credible Dem running against her in the primary (I considered Mike Strimling, but he seems kinda over-wrought), and she'll certainly go along with the party line on the most important bills (even if, unlike Barbara Boxer, she'll never actually be a champion of them), so, meh, I guess I'll vote for her.

US Rep, CD 14: Jackie Speier. Speier has a long and admirable history in state and national politics; repeating it here would be redundant.

State Senator, SD 13: This is a tough one for me, because I really like both Sally Lieber and Jerry Hill. Sally has a great history of work on legislation dealing with poverty issues, especially at the intersection with childhood development, education, single motherhood, etc. Jerry served on the California Air Resources Board, and has been an advocate for our region's cleantech industry. After some consideration, I've decided to go with Jerry, because, as I've remarked before, I think the legislature needs people who have his kind of technical expertise. Also, just in general, I have more direct experience with Jerry, who has been my Assemblyman for the last couple years; I've had very positive interactions with him and his staff. I have nothing bad to say about Sally, and every time I've talked with her I've liked what she had to say, but I haven't actually been a constituent, though Xta was before we moved in together. In any case, if she wins, I'll still be happy with the outcome.

State Assembly, AD 22: Kevin Mullin, who's the only Dem running.

County of San Mateo Board of Supervisors, District 4: Shelly Masur. This was another difficult one. There are two other candidates I seriously considered. One is Warren Slocum, who served for many years as the head of the county's staff (clerk / assessor / recorder), and as far as I know is widely seen as having done a competent job in that role; however I'm really not impressed with his campaign for the supervisor office; he doesn't seem to have done a lot to stake out clear positions, and hasn't collected any notable endorsements that I can see. The other is Memo Morantes, who did a much better job than Masur at laying out his positions on his website, and specifically mentioned in his statement for the voter guide one of the local policies I care most about (support for electrifying the CalTrain corridor and ultimately bringing through a high-speed rail route to SF, even if there's a Palo Alto / Menlo Park / Atherton crowd who insist on being whiny NIMBYs about it). OTOH, Masur also does support the "blended option" for high-speed rail (which is to say, use of the CalTrain corridor -- this seems to be the consensus position except among local politicians in a few of our wealthier towns), and she has a list of very strong endorsements, including the local party (which I've been involved with before, and generally like, and their endorsement works pretty well as a proxy for "she must largely agree with me on the stuff where Morantes has done a better job publishing his takes on issues like the local jail, high speed rail, etc"). Morantes got Speier's endorsement, which is certainly important as well. Ultimately, I'm deciding on the basis of the fact that Morantes is opposing Measures T, U, and X (he says he's in favor of finding new revenue, but dislikes these particular measures). I am in favor of them, and I worry that he is trying to court votes from anti-tax voters in general (which is a dangerous road to go down, because if you're dependent on those people, you can basically never vote for any revenue). I understand his arguments against, but disagree, and I'm having trouble finding any stronger way to differentiate between him and Masur.

ETA 6/1: In a late-breaking development, the Friends of CalTrain organization sent out a questionnaire on transit issues, the results of which are here. As of this writing, I'd say Masur's answers are the most persuasive; Morantes hasn't responded. I'm feeling reassured about my choice to go with her.

Prop 28: Yes. This changes the term limit structure for the legislature from "six years in the Assembly, eight in the Senate" to "up to twelve years total across the two houses". I'm opposed to term limits in general. As President Bartlett put it: The Constitution already gave us term limits; they're called elections. Legislating -- especially leading a push for major reforms -- is a difficult, complicated job. It takes a long time to learn to do it well, and to build up the relationships and alliances that are necessary to get a complex bill passed. If you believe that big issues sometimes require big solutions, not just small, piecemeal, uncomplicated adjustments, then you pretty much need to have at least some legislators who will work on those issues over the course of many years. Under our current system, by the time a legislator has learned the ropes enough to even start working on such things, he has maybe four more years to get stuff done. Furthermore, the constant churn through the Capitol enhances the position of the lobbyists, who are a permanent long-term presence. So: I'd much rather see us scrap term limits altogether. But still, this changes the system so that people go from the "farm team" of lower offices to a longer period in one house rather than to a really short stint in the Assembly and then maybe the Senate. It also should reduce the problem of feuds between Assembly members who are eyeing the same Senate seat.

Prop 29: Yes. Raises the tax on cigarettes from $0.87 to $1.87 per pack, to fund cancer research conducted in CA. This will move us from being one of the lowest-tax states on tobacco, to kind of the low end of the middle of the pack. It will still put us far short of the level where I'd expect to develop a major black market / tax evasion problems. (New York, at $4.35 a pack, has serious problems with people buying cigs in other states and then bringing them to NY for illegal resale.) I'd prefer it if they let the money go into the general fund, b/c I'm not a fan of ballot-box budgeting, but frankly, even if they were going to take all the money collected from this, pile up the cash, and have a nice bonfire, I'd vote for it solely for the Pigovian benefits.

Measures T, U, and X: Yes. These impose taxes on businesses operating in unincorporated San Mateo County -- vehicle rental, hotels, and commercial parking, respectively. These are all taxes that cities can and do take advantage of, but which currently you can mostly avoid if you operate in an unincorporated area. These taxes are more about restoring parity between the cities and unincorporated areas than really about "new" taxes. Furthermore, the usual crowd of anti-taxers have been particularly disingenuous in their campaign against these measures, e.g. trying to mislead people into thinking that T is a general "car tax" that would affect personal vehicles.

Xta's birfday dinner!

2012-04-15T01:11:51Z

Benu.

Mitt Romney just wants to get into America's pants.

2012-03-02T19:00:53Z

You've seen clips of Mitt Romney's big Michigan speech, right? The one where he's going on in a faux-emotional voice about how much he luhrvs Michigan, because "the trees are the right height", and he loves cars, and so on.

It struck me that the tone of the speech is a dead-on match for the tone of a guy who is dating a woman who has kids, and doesn't particularly like them, but is trying to fake it, because he really wants to get into mom's pants. "Do ya like baseball son? I love baseball!" The desperation to find some point at which he can at least fake a connection is palpable. Even little kids can detect that kind of fakeness. So the question is: are Republicans smarter than a five-year-old?

Gratuitous Icon Post

2012-02-19T06:29:40Z

Because I needed a Keiun icon.

We got collars for the cats today; will have to post a link when Xta uploads the photos. We hadn't been doing collars for quite a while, but decided that really they ought to have tags, especially the ones that certify their vaccinations, so folks know they're safe. We got little engraved things with my cell number, as well. I hope it will never matter. Also, I hope Keiun will get used to hers; so far she doesn't like it. Hoshi, surprisingly, has been totally OK with hers. She hated the one she wore for roughly ages 0-3.

Las Cascadas del Río Cuervo

2012-02-18T17:38:15Z

A photo of this waterfall, in more or less this same condition, was part of how I originally pitched the idea of going to Spain for our honeymoon. As I recall, Xta asked me whether there would be any snow in Spain, so I went googling for photos with "Spain ice", "Spain snow", and "Spain winter"...

Obviously the person is included in this photo solely to give you a sense of scale, not because it was totally awesome to creep out and touch the giant 9-foot-long icicles.

When we were starting the hike, there was a family (British?) coming back down. Their daughter, who was probably about 10 or 12, was carrying a javelin-length icicle in her mitten. Now that's parenting I approve of.

Full honeymoon trip report...

2012-02-13T00:21:28Z

I'm pirating this from stuff I originally wrote up for our travel agent, then adding more detail that may be more of interest to friends, especially if you might be visiting some of the same cities...

Edited to Add: Xta added a few good thoughts down in the comments. Also, since I mentioned I was writing this for our agent, I should mention her: Laurie Valdez of Peak Travel was extremely helpful in planning the trip, even working through the last few itinerary details outside regular work hours so Xta and I could sit in our living room and talk things through with her directly rather than going back and forth in email. We found her through the Better World Club. (Which I also recommend in general -- it's like AAA, except not evil. AAA funds lobbying against public transit, cleaner cars, etc. If you join BWC, get our member number, I believe there's a referral credit.)

We've had a busy week since we got home, re-acclimating to work, the 9-hour time shift, etc. You can find a lot of photos and commentary on our Flickr accounts (mostly Christa's -- on mine I've just been doing commentary on the restaurants):

One general warning, if you're trying to think through scheduling for a trip to Spain: a LOT of things either close early, or entirely, on Sunday, Monday, and in some cases Tuesday. We narrowly missed driving out to Cardona only to find everything shut down, because fortunately I checked scheduling / reservation stuff online, and we adjusted our car reservation schedule to make it work. (We also, on our last day in Madrid, ended up not getting to go to a restaurant we'd been interested in -- Arola, in the Reina Sofia Museum -- b/c it was closed Sunday, which is actually a change from the hours reported for them on Google Local and some local newspaper reviews; I guess maybe they reduced hours for the winter. n.b.: Don't try to Google the restaurant; their web registration apparently expired and got hijacked by some annoying domain squatter, who posted rather unpleasant porn. If my Spanish were better, I might've tried to explain that to the woman I got on the phone when I tried to call for a reservation. As it was, just understanding that she was telling me their hours had changed and they were totally closed on Sunday was about my limit. I really wish restaurants would be smarter about their websites.)

Getting from the Madrid airport to Atocha to Barcelona was a bit of a chore, with the bus connection and then the vastness of Atocha station, but the AVE ride itself was really neat. We desperately need intercity high speed rail in the US.

Barcelona: Barcelona House was very pleasant, if a bit spare. Nifty modern decor. The elevator was a bit cramped, but that seems to be the norm throughout Spain. My only complaint would be that we had simply could not persuade the damn maids to not to change our towels out every day. Like all hotels these days, they had one of those little signs saying that if you wanted to be water efficient you should hang your towels on the rack, and they wouldn't change them, but the maids paid no attention to that rule. This would only be a mild annoyance from an environmental point of view in any case, but for us it's a functional issue: we both have very long hair, and really NEED an extra towel or two in order to dry off after showering. And every time they'd change the towels, they would not replace the extras. So we'd have to call down for extras every morning, and have one of us wait to shower until they'd been delivered. After the first two days, this got kind of irritating. Only on the very last day of our stay did our extra towels survive the maid visit. :-P

There's a quite nice and affordable restaurant, The Grill Room, right across the street from Barcelona House, and it's also very close to a location of a Spanish chain called Nostrum, which was convenient for breakfast or healthy snacks. We also had awesome meals at two places in the Gothic Quarter recommended to us by Elizabeth Falkner: Espai Sucre (expensive but amazing), and BubóBar (much less expensive, with innovative takes on traditional tapas, and situated right next door to Bubó, a world-renowned sweet shop).

Sagrada Familia was fabulous, and Parc Güell and the Gaudi House. If people are going to stay down near Las Ramblas, they should be prepared to use the Metro to get over there, as it would be a quite long walk. (On the bright side, the Metro is not difficult, and all the routes we used had cars roughly every three minutes. The Madrid Metro is similar, with cars as frequent as every 2 minutes in some parts.) I found Las Ramblas itself mostly kind of depressing -- totally overrun with tourists, students, and slackers. On the bright side, you can walk northeast from there into the Gothic Quarter, which is great (we probably could've spent another whole day checking out the various churches and little museums back there, and every time you'd turn a corner you'd come across some little plaza with a neat sculpture). Also, Plaça de Colom (at the end of Las Ramblas) and the piers were pretty. You can walk from there (or take the Metro from the Lyceum) over to Montjüic, which is gorgeous. We spent basically two whole days wandering around up there, and there were still parts we didn't see. Our first visit, we went past the art museum and through the Olympic campus to the cemetery. Unfortunately, the visit there got cut a bit short because I was coming down with a cold. Fortunately, there is at least a convenient bus that runs from the bottom of the hill back around to the harbor end of Avinguda del Paral·lel, a block from Plaça de Colom. Possibly we should've just taken that around to visit, since it's the lower parts of the cemetery that have most of the older, more elaborate stonework, anyways.

We took a whole day to go out to Girona for El Celler, and it was entirely worthwhile. The city of Girona is not much to look at, though the river park is pleasant. But the restaurant completely deserves its reputation, and for its quality was quite decently priced. (€155 per person for the longer "festival" menu, including VAT, and of course you don't really have to tip in Europe. I was recently reading about a place in SF that has just been awarded two Michelin stars, and looked at their website; their full menu is $250 per person, and I'm assuming that's before tax and tip, so you'd have to call it more like $325 by the time you're done, even if you're going cheap on drinks. The value comparison there tilts heavily in favor of El Celler.)

We also did the day trip to Cardona, which I highly recommend, for both the castle (which isn't huge, but is worth a couple hours of wandering, especially the sanctuary and crypt) and the salt mine (which is completely unlike any other caves I've seen -- though I'd recommend people try to schedule a visit where the tour guide is at least using Castilian, rather than Catalunyan; they'll give you some materials in English, but I suspect I would've gotten more out of the trip if I'd at least been able to pick up a little of the guide's talk). I kind of wish we'd been able to stay in the Parador, inside the castle; it's just gorgeous, and the restaurant looked very nice as well. The central "old town" area was interesting, but small, and the gothic church was closed for renovations, so I can't say much about that. Cardona wasn't really a tourist attraction until just the last 5-6 years or so; it's starting to have good infrastructure for visitors (though still a bit short on English translations), but hasn't become at all crowded yet; even our friends in Guadalajara, who have travelled around the country a lot, hadn't heard of it.

I will digress, here, to mention that National / ATESA "upgraded" us from the compact we'd reserved to a midsize Peugeot (bigger than my Saturn ION at home). It handled like a nauseated cow, gave me terrible visibility to the sides and rear so I was constantly nervous, and had a turning radius that may have been worse than the Astro minivan my mother used to own. I hated that car with fiery intensity of a thousand burning suns. Somebody needs to explain to those morons that given the narrow streets (especially in the old town areas -- it's a miracle I never gashed the side of the car taking some turn in Granada or Cuenca, where our hotels were right smack in the medieval parts of town), and Spanish drivers' tendency to regard things like signs and traffic lights more as suggestions than actual laws, a small nimble car is an absolute necessity, and they clearly ought to be stocking a lot more of them. Oh, and speaking of: Anyone who's going to drive in Spain ought to be warned about just how nuts the drivers are, and the signage. They put all their traffic lights on the side of the intersection that's closer to you, so once you're at the stop line, it's quite difficult to see the light. Most drivers, I suspect, are actually watching the pedestrian walk light, and will start driving again as soon as that turns red (even though that's several seconds before the proper traffic light goes green). Also, you get many situations, especially at the (numerous!) circles, where there are two or three lights stacked up practically on top of each other, and it can be quite difficult to tell which one is intended for you. And then there are the highway signs, that will give you a dozen different things that a given exit is taking you "towards", which makes it tricky to figure out what the exit is actually going onto. Generally the exits before and after the one you actually want will end up sharing several of the labels. It was a good thing we had both an in-car GPS and the iPhone -- each of them had some failings (in particular, the data on the in-car system was about two years out of date relative to major construction that had been happening on the A-4, on our trip from Granada to Cuenca) but between the two we got by mostly OK. The signage around Madrid is particularly egregious -- we managed to miss the same exit on two different days, first when we were returning the rental car, and then again driving the car we borrowed from our friends in Guadalajara (actually Cabanillas del Campo, a little suburb on the edge of Guadalajara, on the Madrid side of town).

Tarragona: The AC Hotel was pleasant, though I wish they offered free in-room WiFi. They had free WiFi only in the lobby, and the in-room price was a bit unreasonable. Their hotel restaurant look OK, but overpriced, so we went elsewhere to eat. (We found two really great places near the Plaça de la Font, Crêperie Kenavo and Degvsta. The plaza itself is kind of a tourist trap, but there's great stuff hidden in the blocks just around it.) It was a bit of a walk from the hotel to where most of the interesting sights were; not a huge distance, but at least 20 minutes. Depending on how people feel about walking around an unfamiliar city, that could be an issue for some travelers. (We definitely were referring to my iPhone map a lot.) There's a great walking tour of the ruins that we kind of stumbled our way into, that begins on the Via de l'Imperi Romà. The visitor center, with various pamphlets, and a set of really cool models of the Roman city, is through the door to the right, on Plaza del Pallol; the walking tour of the old walls starts through the door on the left. If you follow the walls all the way around, you can then kind of make a u-turn into the section of the city that has the Cathedral, Seminary, Arquesbisbat (the seat of the local archbishop), and University Rovira (which has some neat architecture from more recent periods -- say, 100 to 200 years old, instead of 500 to 2000 years *g*). From there it's another short walk to the Museo Nacional Arqueológico de Tarragona, which is spectacular -- it includes a visit to a roof deck with a truly amazing view, and the back exit takes you through the ruins of the Roman Circus. When you get to the end of that, you can either turn right and head over to Plaça de la Font for a meal, or make a left and walk two blocks down to the amphitheater. We also took a detour from there down to the beach. We managed to do all of that in one (very busy!) day, including lunch at Degvsta and a very brief visit to the acqueduct on the way out of town... I think we could've easily spent two days there instead of one. I would've liked more time to see more of the sights in the park around the acqueduct. The acqueduct itself is really amazing -- it's incredible to see this structure that's lasted for literally milennia. You're allowed to just walk out across it, all the way to the other end of the valley if you want. (It was already getting towards sunset already when we were there, unfortunately, so we didn't take the time -- needed to get on the road to Valencia.)

Valencia: The Barcelo is nice in some ways -- pleasant staff, decent rooms. A few issues: Their parking is useless for any but the very smallest cars. Fortunately, there's a fair bit of unmetered street parking in the area, but still; I would not even count them as "having parking" unless you're going to be driving a subcompact. (You could get away with something bigger than a Smart ForTwo... but only barely. We certainly could not park the odious Peugeot there.) Their in-house restaurant is kind of terrible, and it's a bit of a walk to get to anyplace good (though I highly recommend going over to Café Infinito, which is maybe a 15-20 minute walk or a very short bus ride). The whole building is black, and not terribly well ventilated, which means that the sunny side gets really warm during the day unless you want to just leave your window open (and with winter weather it can be tricky getting the balance between too warm and too cold). The amount of stuff in the old town of Valencia is almost a bit overwhelming. We definitely could've spent an entire second day there. The tourist card is a great value in here -- makes many things free, and gets discounts on many more. I think the coolest thing we saw in there was the museum of the Almoïna, where you walk down below street level into some preserved excavations, and see how all the layers of history are literally piled up on each other, with pieces of Roman, Visigothic, Cailphate, and Gothic settlements all layerd onto the same site. The anthropological museum was also pretty neat, with artifacts from the pre-Roman Iberians, among other things. We also went up into both of the remaining pairs of gate towers along the old city walls, and in between stopped for an Agua de Valencia cocktail (kind of an alcoholic orange-ade, using the local Valencia oranges, which are superb, some local cava, and possibly some sort of orange liquer -- anyways, it's very tasty, and it's the city's signature drink, so if you tipple, you're sort of required to have one).

We had a quite nice dinner that evening at La Lola, which is apparently known well enough locally that when we mentioned it to our waiter at Infinito the next night he knew it. It's not cheap, but not super-expensive either, and it's nice for a romantic dinner. The chef (at least I think he was the chef) is a young, energetic, long-haired guy, probably around the same age as us, very hands on about greeting and serving customers, and speaks quite good English. When we were leaving lunch (at Creperie Breton Annaick, which was also quite good, and inexpensive) he attempted to invite us in; we demurred for obvious reasons, but ended up coming back later, b/c the place did sound good, and our Valencia card was good for a free drink. :-)

For the City of Arts and Sciences, I think the one day we allotted was probably enough; maybe you could do two days if you wanted to take things slower, and have a half-day to relax after all the walking around. (By the end of our visit there, Christa was starting to get a bit of travel burnout. Also, I kinda wish we'd spent more time either walking the river park, or visiting the art museum, or even just seeing a show at the Hemisferic, instead of visiting the science museum, which was OK, but not that much better than any other science center. A lot of exhibits were copies of San Francisco's Exploratorium, and acknowledged as such in the displays.) The Oceanografic is definitely a must-see, with its various underground chambers. Also, we never walked down to the marina district at all, so there's another day we easily could've spent... (I think maybe there's a maritime museum down there, with stuff about the history of seafaring? Sounded interesting...)

Heading south from Valencia, we went through the Parque de la Albufera, which was neat. We also drove by some cities that have amazing landscapes. Calp, in particular, has this amazing rock over it that reminded me a bit of pictures you see of Rio de Janeiro. I could've seen spending half a day in the park, and half getting up to the top of the rock in Calp and then staying overnight there, if we'd had infinite time...

Granada: I think the 2 to 2.5 days we were here was about right. The Reina Cristina was OK, but a bit antiquated. You had to call down to the desk to get your heat turned on. Also, the in-house café didn't look very good, and the actual restaurant looked so expensive we didn't try it. On the bright side, they did have cheap network access. The parking lot is a two block walk away, and requires staff to help you access it. Also, it's another place where things get very narrow and windy; parking the Peugeot was harrowing, though we ultimately did manage.

The night we got to town we finally did appropriate research and realized that we should buy tix in advance for Alhambra, so we got them for the latter day we were there. You can buy online then get the tix from any La Caixa ATM. The first day we walked up the mountain past the Alhambra, to go see a cemetery that's grand enough to be on an official EU registry / tour of scenic and historic cemeteries. There's also a lot of open parkland up there, and seemingly-abandoned olive groves. Very pretty. We also walked by some of the historic buildings in the old town, and had a nice meal at Cafe Botánico, near University Plaza. (There was also a little creperie right on that plaza, that we kind of stumbled into our first night after the first place we tried to go was overcrowded and the second was closed). The Alhambra itself was gorgeous, and soaked up the morning and early afternoon -- we made sure to get there on the early side of our window, since you have to pick only a half-day, for your ticket... We had lunch at an awesome little taginery where the owner, a former history student, spent a year re-creating the look and feel of an Andalucían palace. After that we visited the Royal Crypt and Cathedral (both spectacular, though they have stupid no-photo rules, which most people actually ignore, and I wish we'd started ignoring sooner, since we missed getting shots of the crypt), and walked up the hill to San Nicolas.

Cuenca: On the drive up, there was the minor adventure of the GPS becoming very confused because the road we were on had not existed when its data was loaded. Also, we saw ALL THE OLIVES IN SPAIN. I jest, but really, you'd come to the top of some ridgeline, and look around and see olives out to the horizon in every direction. There must have been millions of trees, maybe tens of millions.

Finally we got to Cuenca itself, which was gorgeous, if a bit small. I think our one day visit to the city was mostly sufficient. We saw the cathedral and the modern art museum in the hanging house, walked down through the ravine over to the Convent of Saint Paul and then back across the bridge, and then out to the highest point. I do wish we'd been there on a day when the restaurant in the other hanging house was open. If we'd stayed a second day, we could've hiked down the north side of the mountain, to the scenic path along the Júcar. The Posada San Jose was beautiful -- in some ways the most luxurious of the hotels we stayed in, certainly in terms of how spacious the room was and the quality of the view out the window. On the downside, there was no network, and although breakfast was nice, their restaurant wasn't even open for the winter. We ate dinner both nights at El Aljibe, the restaurant attached to the Hotel Convento del Giraldo, because they had free wi-fi for patrons, and the food was tasty and reasonably priced. (Though ordering there was a little tricky -- the local accent is kind of hard to understand.)

The latter day we were there, when we were planning to end the day in Guadalajara, we drove through El Parque Natural Serranía de Cuenca. I simply cannot emphasize enough that this is a place more people should see. The landscape is as unique as any of the great parks in the US, like the Grand Canyon, or Arches in Utah. Driving through, almost every curve brings you to some insanely beautiful vista point. You see vast cliffs in which the striations of the different layers of rock are distinctly visible, with stripes of all kinds of colors -- beige, and gold, but also the occasional greenish streak, and reds, some of which are so dark they're shading into purple. The river is gorgeous, and the lake / reservoir that's just east of Uña. We stopped for lunch at a place in Tragacete called El Gamo, where we had an absolutely superb meal. The owner spoke very little English, but was extremely friendly. We talked a bit about how difficult business is currently (especially with winter being bad for tourism, even though the park is still absolutely gorgeous then, and we were getting by fine with our US-east-coast-appropriate layers). I told him that I would mention his place to our friends, so here's the contact info from his card:

Hostelería El Gamo Gestión, S.L.
Fco. Javier de la Hoz del Pozo (javier@elgamo.org)
Teléfonos: 687-76-92-63 y 969-28-90-08
16150 Tragacete (Cuenca)
www.elgamo.org / info@elgamo.org

We didn't stay in a room there, but the restaurant part was very comfortable. We got a table right by the fire, which was nice, since it was a cold enough day that by the time we left the park in the evening it was snowing. If you're going through the area and you're remotely into hiking and nature, I highly recommend staying a day or two, to get a full visit to some of the various sights. We went through Ciudad Encantada and did the shortest part of the Nacimiento del Río Cuervo hike, just up to the Cascadas hillside, which with the cold weather was an amazing curtain of icicles. We didn't go the full 40-minute hike up to the springs. There also was apparently a nifty hike to the springs for the Júcar, with some cool waterfalls; I really wish we'd had an extra day, to see more of that stuff, as well as going back over to the area around Uña.

When we finally got to the Madrid area, the weather had turned so cold and snowy that we ended up giving up entirely on going out to Toledo and Segovia. (Segovia, in particular, was suffering a blizzard.) We spent one day just relaxing at our friends' house, and the rest of the days we went into Madrid, and saw various things -- the Royal Palace and Cathedral, various plazas, El Prado, the Royal Gardens and Parque del Retiro... We also visited the Cemetery of the Almudena, which was amazing. We also went up to the fashion district around Chueca, partly just to visit the New Rock Store -- we both have boots from them, and they're a Spanish brand. We also got Christa some new leather gloves b/c her old ones tore, and went to a goth club in that neighborhood, Club 666 at La Sala Wind on Plaza del Carmen, which was amusing; goth clubs in Spain turn out to be pretty similar to those in the US, including where we originally met. *g*

We didn't end up going to any really fancy meals in Madrid, though we did really enjoy Pui's Thai Tapas, which is in the same neighborhood as the Reina Sofia. They had a couple dishes I've never seen in the US. The Pad Bameen was particularly good. It's almost like a Thai version of Spaghetti Carbonara (which I'd seen in several tapas bars, and enjoyed thoroughly at Grill Room; apparently large swathes of Europe have adopted that dish with enthusiasm). The Bameen has some ground pork and vegetables with a bit of yellow curry, tossed over stir-fried noodles with a whole fried egg on top) -- and some really good cocktails. We also had some more traditional tapas at a place simply called La Tapería, on the Plaza Platería de Martínez, just off the Paseo del Prado, across the street from the Royal Gardens.

For getting into Madrid after we'd returned the rental car, one day we just went with our friends from Guadalajara (who were wonderful hosts in general -- their house is gorgeous, and they fed us very well the whole time we were there, and refused to let me pick up the tab for the meals we had when they came into town with us), and the other couple times we drove a borrowed car that was, shall we say, interesting. Since it was stick, Xta had to drive, and finally gained an appreciation for the difficulties I'd been having tracking everything going on around me when I was driving, for earlier parts of the trip. :-P

We ended up using three of our four rail pass days -- Madrid to Barcelona, Barcelona to Girona, and then we used them a final time going from Guadalajara to the airport. Oh well. I think we still got either most or all of the value on that, because just that first AVE trip, by itself, was a huge chunk of the value.

I think that about covers everything. :-)

Next time (probably at least ten years out, sigh), we want to get back to see the progress on Sagrada Familia, then visit the Euskal Herria, and San Sebastian and Bilbao -- there are no less than four of the World 50 up that way -- Mugaritz, Arzak, Martín Berasategui, and Asador Etxebarri -- as well as of course the Guggenheim Bilbao. Then maybe we could go back south and actually see Segovia and Toledo (and I could also add that I'm interested in getting to Salamanca and Zaragoza), then go down south for Seville, Cordova, Málaga, and Cadiz... And of course we still wouldn't have gotten to the northwesternmost area, with places like Gijón, and all of Galicia, which has its own dialect and culture (Gallego) like Catalunya... It turns out that Spain is kinda big.

Nomz.

2012-02-12T07:55:12Z

I've finished annotating the photos from El Celler de Can Roca, which placed second on last year's World's 50 Best list. And I can see why.

Interestingly, although it's certainly expensive -- the most we've ever paid for a meal, by a substantial margin -- while we were in Madrid, I had an email from one of the coupon services offering a discounted seating at some up-and-coming place in the Mission that just got awarded two Michelin stars. The price for this place, even after the discount, would be more than what we paid for El Celler; and I'm not even accounting for tax and tip. This place is clearly commanding a premium simply for being the hot new thing; there is no way it can possibly justify such a stratospheric cost, solely based on food quality. In any case, after running those numbers in my head, I decided there was no reason to go, and so I forgot the actual name.

Woo, photos from two-ish weeks ago!

2012-02-03T16:32:04Z

I have finally finished writing in descriptions on photos from Espai Sucre, the "dessert restaurant" that Elizabeth Falkner told us we needed to try. It was awesome, and I can see why she's into it. We are kind of taking today "off" from running around seeing sights, and just chilling out at our friends' house in a suburb of Guadalajara, the city with too many As.

One of the more puzzling constructions in Spanish...

2012-01-16T23:10:41Z

...at least to my mind, is "hace [tiempo]". (Incidentally, "tiempo" can translate as "time" or "weather". I'm thinking about time here, even though you also can ask "¿Qué tiempo hace?" to ask what the weather is.) You get things like: "¿Cuánto hace que está construyendo esta valla? Hace una semana que él lo construye." Literally, this translates to something like, "How much does it make, that he is building this fence? It makes one week that he builds it." Idiomatically, it's more like, "How long has it been since he started building the fence? It has been one week since he started constructing it."

What gets me is the fact that both verbs involved are in present tense. My understanding is that the nature of the "hace [tiempo]" construction does require that whatever you're asking about continue to be true into the present time; you're attaching an earlier starting date to something that can be thought of in present tense. So, you can say, "Hace tres mil años que el Rey Tutankhamun lleva muerto." It has been three thousand years that King Tut carries* deadness. This conception sorta helps make it work in my head, but I still find the construction strange. Even stranger than subjunctive, and don't get me started on how bizarre I find the use of subjunctive. (In particular, how come I don't use subjunctive with "creer"? When I say, "I think that X", I almost always mean that I believe it, but am not certain of it. If I were certain of it, I would simply state proposition X. So why do we get indicative with "creo que X", but subjunctive with "espero que X", I hope that X.)

If you want to talk about something that isn't true anymore, I'm pretty sure you have to use something else, like "[tiempo] atrás", which you might translate as an amount of time aft; "X está detrás de Y" says that X is located in a place behind Y, whereas the "a" particle in "atrás" gives a sense of movement and directionality, towards the back. To say "I spoke Spanish pretty well fifteen years ago, but I've forgotten a lot," I use, "Hablaba español bastante bien quince años atrás, pero he olvidado mucho." I think this is pretty good idiom, but I'm not entirely sure. I don't suppose anyone out there is a fluent enough speaker to comment on this? (Maybe kragen and paisleychick?)

* "Llevar" can mean "to carry" or "to wear", but it can also be used with adjectives like "muerto", dead, and "casado", married -- although that one almost always gets used in the plural, casados, for obvious reasons. These days some of y'all might even be llevando casadas. Hooray for diversity! :-)

ETA: Rosetta stone gives some examples where they use a preterite verb with "hace [tiempo]", and they appear to mean ago. ("Mis abuelos se casaron en África hace cien años," appears to be "My grandparents married each other in Africa one hundred years ago.") So maybe at least in European Spanish that's the correct form? Blargh. I got taught kind of a mix of European and American Spanishes, because I had teachers who'd learned different ways, over different years of school. And then I forgot most of it, so it's all a bit of a muddle... :-/

El mejor frase de todos en la Piedra Rosetta.

2012-01-11T07:05:20Z

El gato está en el lavabo.

Complete with adorable picture. Like these. Very cute, if a bit bittersweet.

Yo tenía una gata a quien le gustó mucho estar en el lavabo.

spoiler alert

2011-12-19T03:23:39Z

ARRRGH! :-(

Elizabeth Falkner does not win Next Iron Chef. :-(

The competition between Mehta and Garces came down to a very similar call between creativity and potential, versus technique and control. They made the same call last time. I still think that one was an epically bad call.

I at least am actually really impressed with Zakarian. I find Garces boring. Zakarian doesn't take the kind of risks or come up with the kind of absolutely off-the-wall genius dishes that Elizabeth does, but he has incredible subtlety, and he can take the essence of a traditional dish and refine it into something surprising.

I do think, though, that when you hear the judges saying stuff like that Zakarian is "like an athlete at his peak", while Falkner is exceeding her reputation and still developing -- even though for this competition she was only a hair behind him -- doesn't that mean you want the person who's still growing, rather than the one who's peaked? Again, this is the same way I felt about the judgement on Mehta. OK, maybe he arguably did not deliver quite as good a meal that day; but who do you want on the show? The guy who's predictable, or the one who will maybe take a few episodes to learn to manage the time better, but ultimately will deliver things that are surprising and innovative?

Anyways. I have to respect Zakarian; the meal he delivered looked and sounded amazing. I'm at least glad Elizabeth made him work hard for that victory.

Random revelation: the brussel sprout leaves that turned up integrated into the butternut squash ravioli at our wedding? That was a flourish from Elizabeth's Next Iron Chef finale meal. Very cool.

Orson - Next Iron Chef ep05

2011-12-03T02:35:19Z

Pics are up on Flickr now.

I figure, if you want to read about it, you can read the text there.

I was so stuffed after this one. Really, really good food.